Kathy Barnette is running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and she joins the podcast this week to discuss her new book Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America. We focus on the mission to saturate our institutions with Critical Race Theory and the push for equity over equality of opportunity. 

Kathy Barnette is running to become the first black Republican Woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. She is a veteran, an adjunct professor of corporate finance, a regular guest on national TV and radio, and most importantly a mother and a wife. Kathy’s new book describes what it’s like being black and conservative in America. She says “socialism is the newest form of slavery.”


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, Kathy Barnette, who is running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania joins us. She’s here to discuss her new book, Nothing To Lose, Everything To Gain: Being Black and Conservative and America. We’ll delve into the push to saturate our institutions with critical race theory and the push for equity over equality of opportunity. But before we bring her on, a little bit more about Kathy. Kathy Barnette is running to become the first black Republican woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. She is a veteran and adjunct professor of corporate finance, a regular guest on national TV and radio and most importantly, a mother and a wife. Kathy’s new book describes what it’s like being black and conservative in America and she says, “Socialism is the newest form of slavery.” Kathy, it is a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.

Kathy Barnette:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be on.

Beverly Hallberg:

And there’s so much that we’re going to dive into, but I thought we would start by taking a broader stroke and have you tell us a little bit about your background and what made you interested in entering the world of politics, especially during such a polarizing time.

Kathy Barnette:

I know, right? Let me just start off with the latter question. One of those quotes that we find ourselves mentioning often is Edmund Burke, “The only thing that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.” And you hear people saying that all the time and it really became one of those mantras for me. You’re looking around your nation, I feel as though our country is being unraveled. She’s being unraveled at the seam. And it’s one thing to stand on the sidelines and talk about what you think should happen and looking around for the type of leader you can get behind, and it’s something very different to say, if not me, than who? It’s time for good people to get off the sidelines and to find new and different ways of engaging. Our nation is in trouble and so that was the start of me thinking about my role and what I’ve done for our country, educating my children. So that was the start of me thinking differently about what I can contribute to the country and toward the direction that I want it to go.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah. And I think a lot of people who are listening feel that same thing. They have concerns about the country unraveling in a lot of different ways. What ways do you see the country headed down a bad path and what do you think we can do to course correct?

Kathy Barnette:

It’s so many. I mean, no matter what you’re looking at, we’re being impacted and it’s not just one thing, right? So you introduced me. In your introduction, you talked about critical race theory. That is one way. But then you look at the Southern border, that is another way. And then you look at the people being incentivized not to work and from the economic perspective and then the inflation numbers coming out, the job list report coming out. That is another way. When you look at how our lack of response to China and what they inflicted upon this nation by intentionally releasing COVID-19, not telling the world what they knew when they knew it. We’re being unraveled in so many different areas.

It’s very unnerving to an individual who is sitting back and watching all of the things that are going on when you see our political leaders working so furiously, one side of our political leaders working with great stealth and determination to pass things like H.R. 1 to eliminate the electoral college, to make D.C. a statehood, to get rid of the filibuster. That’s our country unraveling. When you see the other side not saying very much, as we see these corporations take such unprecedented and bold moves to silence Americans or just to silence the most powerful person in the world, then President Trump. That’s our nation unraveling. So it’s a mixture of things that are going on in our nation. And then when I look at my children, they’re young. I’ve invested so much like so many parents into creating the kind of children that we can release into our society, and then to look at our society and to begin to wonder if there will even be an America for them to inherit is quite unnerving.

Beverly Hallberg:

And in addition to you running for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania, you wrote a book which I mentioned in your introduction. It’s called Nothing To Lose, Everything To Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America. I think that fits in perfectly with one of the concerning areas that you mentioned, which is critical race theory. And so I thought it might be just a good place… First of all, can you define for us what is critical race theory and why you think this is so dangerous that it’s seeping into institutions?

Kathy Barnette:

Oh my goodness. Critical race theory, it is something that you hear people talking about, you hear people whispering about. Being on the running for Senate, I’m in a variety of different spaces and I see the concern and I see the panic on people’s face when they talk about critical race theory. It is something that we should be very afraid of. In a nutshell, what is critical race theory? It is an academic discipline formulated in the 1990s, but it is built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. That’s what it is. And it essentially, it has been injected into government agency, into public school systems, teacher training programs, corporate human resource departments. You see it in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy framework and now, I think… And now those things have been going on for well over 10 years.

But what is now becoming more alarming to people is, as we hear, it is being taught in our schools and specifically K through nine and… I’m sorry, K through 12. And you mentioned a word that I don’t think most people understand. You mentioned it during the introduction, when you said equity. When most people hear the word equity, they think equality and it is a part, I believe, that the confusion is intentional. But people, when you’re thinking about critical race theory, you need to understand that equity is not the same thing as equality. Most Americans believe in equality of opportunity. Our nation, whether we’re looking at the Civil War, whether we’re looking at the civil rights movement, all of these things were meant, were about improving our country, moving people forward, bringing people to become a part of the shared experience of the American dream, right? Today, critical race theory is not about improving our country.

It is about overthrowing our country. In fact, critical race theory, I believe, will churn out little racists because it’s all about identity politics. And I thought it was very interesting when you had people who were a part of the Black Lives Matter movement, a part of the foundation of that organization or different organizations, who knows what it is, but they were very forthcoming in saying they are trained Marxists. And this is the genesis of critical race theory. I don’t think the hair on the back of our necks stand up high enough when we hear the word trained Marxist. It was something… Marxism is not new, but now they’ve replaced the word worker with the word race and it is all about creating division. And what is the point of creating division? Because if I can divide you, I can conquer you.

And at the core of critical race theory is this thought of oppressor and oppressed. And right now, seeing that it’s based on race, white people are the oppressors and everyone else, specifically blacks, are the oppressed. White people victimize and black people are the victim, right? And so that is what is now being taught to our children in kindergarten. I find that to be very disturbing. I find that to be very disturbing. I never taught my children about white privilege when that was the new buzz word a couple of years ago because when you look at the word even white privilege, what does that say to me as a black woman? That somehow my brown skin barred me from the world that your white skin gives you great entrance into? Am I to teach my children that every time they walk into the room because of their brown skin, people will see them as inferior?

The overwhelming majority of the spaces I walk in, I’m generally the only black person in that room and yet I walk in like a boss. I don’t walk in like I’m inferior. But can you imagine if I had allowed myself to be manipulated by the concept of white privilege or with the concept behind critical race theory, that everywhere I go, people hate me or people think I’m inferior or I got to prove myself or, everywhere I go, someone is trying to oppress me? That’s not the kind of world I want to live in. It’s certainly not the kind of pathology I want my children to grow up and thinking that somehow their skin has betrayed them. That’s not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in because our nation has done a tremendous amount to right it’s wrong. You asked me earlier just to tell your audience a little bit about who I am and where I come from and my perspective, how I gained this perspective.

I often say I am a little black girl who grew up on a pig farm in Southern Alabama. I grew up below the bottom rung on the economic ladder. I grew up in a home with no insulation, no running water, an outhouse in the back and a well on the side. I could still remember my grandmother asking me to help her in the garden and me feeling as though she just wanted to spend quality time with me. And it wasn’t until I grew up that I realized that in part, that was for our survival. If we wanted beans or greens or potatoes, we had to go out there and grow that for ourselves. But although I grew up in dire economics, no one ever looked at me and told me I was a victim.

No one ever looked at me said, “Kathy, all the odds are against you. You might as well not try.” And because no one gave me that victim mentality or no one ingrained in me this psychology or pathology of lack, I became the first in my family to go and finish college. I spent 10 years in the U.S. Army Reserves or was accepted into Officer Candidate School. I spent time in the financial industry, corporate America, an adjunct professor of corporate finance, authored my first book that went number one on Amazon two months in a row during the pandemic last year-

Beverly Hallberg:

Congrats. That’s amazing.

Kathy Barnette:

So I’m excited about that. I know, right? And now I’m running for Senate, only in America. My story only takes place here.

Beverly Hallberg:

So let me ask you this question. I’m going to play devil’s advocate just a little bit. So what do you say to someone who interacts with you and disagrees with your perspective and they say, “But look at the data, look at the racial disparities.” There are disparities out there when it comes to income, when it comes to educational opportunities. What do you say to those data points?

Kathy Barnette:

Yeah. Listen, over the door of my office, I’m looking at it right now, I have nestled into the wall, “knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” Senator Tim Scott hit the nail on the head, when he said, “Education is the closest thing we have to magic in this country.” And I often say to people, when they talk about all of these disparities, “Please find someone who started off more below the bottom rung than I did and then maybe I’ll listen to you.” It’s not a competition, but it’s a perspective. I know exactly what got me off that pig farm and I have nothing against farmers or pig farmers. I had a wonderful childhood. But the fact is, I did not learn about poverty because I read it from a book or looked at it on a spreadsheet.

I know exactly what it feels like to sit in a room, a dark room, because my mother can not pay for both the rent and the light bill. I know exactly what it feels like to stand in front of an empty refrigerator door and wonder where my next meal was going to come from. And I can assure people that it was not socialism that got me off that pig farm. It was not waiting for a welfare check or a stimulus check or some Democrat galloping into my community and handing me some lifeline. It was education. The closest thing we have to magic was the first thing that I did. The second thing that I did is that I got a job, any job. And I remember saying that once and there was some liberal in the room, a liberal individual, in the room and she came to me and she said, “You know, Kathy? You should have waited for the right job.” And I said to her, “That’s a very privileged statement to make, because when you’re underneath a rock with no real discernible skills, you need a job.”

That taught me so much, these soft skills you just can’t get. And the third thing that got me off that pig farm was waiting to get married before I had children. Now it’s the very thing that most people tell their children, but for some reason, when you go into the black community saying any of those three things, you’re a racist. It boggles my mind. I still remember what got me off that pig farm and it’s not rocket science. Education, right? So if you want to get rid of the disparities, and there are real disparities, overwhelmingly education, jobs, incentivizing people to exhibit different behaviors. It’s this common theme throughout my book actually, is that I was saying, you can look at the black community as a Petri dish to see what happens when Democrats come in and take over absolutely everything, every political office, every administration, every office there is a have, the education. Look at what happens in the black community to understand what will happen if Democrats ever get control of everything in our country.

What I find when I look at the black communities that are controlled by Democrats, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a conservative thought anywhere; what you find are people who are left broke, broken, and bruised. And I was throwing out a warning, a harbinger of sort, of what would happen if Democrats ever gained control. Unfortunately, these people have gained control and so now what you see is the same things they’ve done in the black community, which is work very hard to solidify their control, that’s what H.R. 1 is, it’s meant to solidify their control. That’s what getting rid of the electoral college is, making DC a statehood, removing the filibuster, all of these things are meant to solidify their control. And then once they solidify their control, then they begin to incentivize the type of behavior they want people to exhibit. What do you think the stimulus check is all about? It is a welfare check, incentivizing the types of behavior that they want.

It’s not rocket science to know what’s going to happen, if you begin to pay people more money to stay home, than for them to get up and go get a job. And yet it boggles my mind when I see people like Nancy Pelosi standing up. When the jobs report number came out and say, “We were supposed to hit a million. We hit less than 300,000 people being employed.” And the first comment out of her mouth is, “That proves we need to give more incentives.” It’s very unnerving where we find ourselves today.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, before we continue this conversation, I’d like to take a moment to highlight IWF’s Champion Women Profile series, which focuses on women across the country and world that are accomplishing amazing things. The media too often ignores their stories, but we don’t. We celebrate them and bring their stories directly to you. Our current profile is Representative Michelle Steel from California’s 48th Congressional District. To check out her story, do go to iwf.org to see why she’s this week’s Champion Woman. And Kathy, I wanted to pick up on something that you said. It’s the psychology behind this. It’s the term victimhood. And you talked about the way you perceived yourself, the way you want your children to perceive themselves and you’ve said before that the greatest obstacle that you have found to achieving the American dream is how people perceive themselves. How important is that and do you think that, especially when it comes to children, if we told all of them they could be what they wanted to be, if they worked hard and made an effort, that we would see a huge change in this country?

Kathy Barnette:

Yes, I do, to answer your latter question. But I also believe that as a man or a woman thinks, so is he or she. So if I think of myself as a victim, I’m going to more than likely behave like a victim. If I think of myself as an overcomer, I’m going to more than likely behave as an overcomer. I will see the opportunities instead of the pitfall. Now everything that I said, growing up in the manner in which I did, I’m very acquainted with the history of black people, of America as a whole. So my history is not just being black, I’m an American as well and I understand the story, right? I understand the good, the bad and the downright despicable things that took place. Growing up in the very deep south of Alabama, I have the blood of slave coursing through my veins from both sides of my family, and yet understanding all of that and understanding that there are still racists among us.

There is still… I mean, racism exists. You will never hear me say that that is not the case and yet, with all that information and now having to make an informed decision, I believe that this is the greatest nation that has ever existed. And I earnestly believe having traveled the world, that my story only takes place here in America. And I am grateful to this country, like so many others who have come to this country, over a million people become legalized residents every single year. And what are they looking for? The same thing I was looking for on that farm and that is hope. And that is essentially what the American dream is, right? I find that people have a difficult time defining the American dream, but what the American dream is, is nothing more than upward mobility or the hope that if I work hard, follow some rules, discipline myself the way I think, the way I behave, how I spend my time and my resources, that I could carve out a life for myself.

And that is what I did. And I believe that the American dream is hanging on the precipice right now. I believe we, as a nation, are in trouble right now because those things that were a part of me being able to pull my way out of dire poverty, those very things are being assaulted. Let me just say also, when I think about the American dream, and I think about it a lot, especially now I’ve been going into various communities and trying to find ways to communicate that the American dream is not just for white people, not just for rich people, but it is something that we as Americans have inherited and so many more come to this country trying to gain. But the American dream is capitalism and capitalism is nothing more than a blank check. You get to decide how many zeros you have on that check, right?

And depending on the opportunities, how you get your… Whether your hands are trained, your mind is trained, you get to decide. But all of that is in trouble and it’s being unraveled. We are quickly moving from a capitalist country to a Marxist country. When you have critical race theory now being taught in K through 12, we’re moving into a Marxist system. When you have the UCLA law professor and critical race theorist, Cheryl Harris, proposing to suspend private property rights and start seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines, you are moving into a Marxist society. Last summer, during the summer of rage in Chicago in the Magnificent Mile, very upscale stores, you saw people rioting and looting and when asked, “Why are you looting Nike stores?” And people retorting back, I can’t remember exactly how they said it, but essentially they were redistributing the wealth and no one checked them on that.

No one shamed them. No one said that’s wrong. The FBI didn’t go knocking at their doors. We allowed that to fly by. We are quickly entering into a Marxist society. And just lastly, when you look at those countries that brought in Marxism, where are they now? Soviet Union brought in Marxism, they’re now communist. China brought in Marxism, they’re now communist. Cuba brought in Marxism, they’re now communist. We are in trouble and the American people need to recognize, get their mind around the reality of that and begin to seek out people who understand the crisis we are now in and who will stand up and speak unequivocally about where we are at what needs to take place.

Beverly Hallberg:

And final question, really quickly on that, is you you’re speaking up yourself, you’re encouraging others to speak up, you’re calling for good men to do something, to get involved. What do you say to those who are fearful? Who are fearful they’re going to be called a racist? Fearful that they’re going to be shunned? What encouragement do you give to them?

Kathy Barnette:

Get over it. Get over it. If you are a racist, go fix it. Otherwise, recognize that it is a very effective tool. They call you guys, not me, because I’m black, but they call you guys racist. Why do they do that? Because it’s effective. A couple of weeks ago, the Senate had a hearing on whether or not to get rid of the filibuster. Guess what they titled it? Jim Crow 2.0. What does Jim Crow have to do with removing the filibuster or not? A very consequential move, but what does it have to do? What does Jim Crow have to do with the filibuster? Absolutely nothing. But it doesn’t matter. It’s effective. It works and it works because the overwhelming majority of America are so afraid of being called a racist, so we back down, we tolerate things that we should never tolerate. You should never tolerate someone standing in front of your children and teaching them that they are victim or that they are oppressors and that they’re evil. Why are we tolerating that? I have no idea.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, you heard it here first. Kathy Barnette tells you to get over it and get out there and speak up. Her book is called Nothing to Lose, Everything To Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America. Go out and get the book. And also a reminder that she is running for the U.S. seat that is open in Pennsylvania. So good luck to you on your campaign journey and we so appreciate you joining us on She Thinks today. Thank you, Kathy.

Kathy Barnette:

Thank you so much for having me.

Beverly Hallberg:

And thank you for joining us. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you and investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity and wellbeing for all Americans. Please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate, that is iwf.org/donate. And last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or review on iTunes. It does help. Also, we’d love it if you shared this episode and let your friends know where they can find more She Thinks episodes. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.